


The Stranger and the Ghost

by wearerofthehat



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: F/M, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-04-17 21:16:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14197854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wearerofthehat/pseuds/wearerofthehat
Summary: An alternative take on the story arc I rough out for Red and Naomi in Conversations. In Conversations Red only finds out she's alive around the time Berlin abducts her, but this one looks at what might have happened if he searched for her after Diane made him doubt that she and Jennifer were really dead. While this piece works with some of the same headcannons and assumptions as Conversations, you don't need to have read one in order to read the other.





	The Stranger and the Ghost

Red knocks on her front door. He can saunter uninvited into any place in the world as if he owns it and make it truth in a matter of seconds, but not here. He knows she is inside but he will wait until she answers. If she does not, he will leave and try again later. His palms are sweaty. It has taken a week to come to this decision, and he is just about to decide that it’s been a huge mistake when he hears steps approaching from the other side of the door.

A breathless moment passes and then they’re face to face for the first time in 23 years. She looks at him as if he is a stranger and he thinks he must be looking at her as if she were a ghost.

Then she lunges forward to slap him across the face. He stands there as his cheek smarts from her blow, while she flinches back slightly as if she’s waiting to see if he will retaliate. She’s scared, he realises. There was anger and hatred in her attack, but fear as well. He can only imagine what they told her about him. She’s been in witness protection ostensibly from him for all this time and now he's turned up at her front door. Yes, she has every reason to be terrified.

‘Carla.’ He has to work his mouth, his tongue for a second before the word comes out and when it does it is raspy and hoarse.

‘It’s Naomi.’

‘Naomi,’ he knew she’d changed her name, but hadn’t anticipated having to call her by it. It feels wrong. ‘May I come in?’

He watches as she weighs her options and when she finally acquiesces he thinks she must be scared he’d pull a gun on her if she refused. He could tell her that he’ll leave if she doesn’t want him inside. But at this rate she might not believe him, and if she does... he doesn’t want to be sent away.

She leads him into a house that is nothing like the one they shared. It is spacious and open, with white walls, large windows and modern furniture. He takes off his fedora and he holds it hanging by his side.

‘Why are you here?’ She is angry, defiant.

There are lines that he does not recognise around her eyes and mouth, lines in a face that he’d thought frozen at the age of 30.

‘Why do you keep looking at me like that?’ He has no idea how he is looking at her.

‘I thought you were dead.’ He hears himself as if from a distance. Yes, he thought she was dead, but she was alive all this time, she is alive and right there, in front of him and suddenly his knees give out and it is all he can do to stagger backwards so that he falls onto the couch. His hands reach behind him to arrest his fall and his fedora bounces off the couch and comes to rest on the floor.

Naomi makes an aborted movement as if to lunge forward and stop his downward descent but he doesn’t see it. He is bent over, with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.

‘You abandoned us! On Christmas Eve!’ She is angry at herself for her instinctive urge to help him, and at him for his show of vulnerability. She more than half suspects it is a ploy of some kind, to get something from her. She’d never caught him doing anything like that to her when they were together, but she would believe anything of the criminal the FBI told her of.

‘No.’ For the first time his voice carries a shadow of its habitual authority, but when he lifts his eyes to meet hers they seem disconcertingly wet. ‘I was on my way home and my car ran out of gas. I walked for miles and when I finally got there all there was, was blood. No bodies but there was so much of it… and I wasn’t thinking clearly. Didn’t even cross my mind to have it tested.’

‘I don’t know anything about that.’ Red doesn’t know if she is reassuring him that she had no part in faking her death, or if she is expressing scepticism that the deception was carried out in the first place. She doesn’t know either. ‘They came that night, told us you’d deserted. That you were running a criminal empire. Had us drop everything and leave.’

At the time, the criminal empire was a lie. He’d been framed by the Cabal but it was no use quibbling over it, as he had made it true in any case.

‘Jennifer. Is she… Please. Can I…’

‘No. She left. She knew that you’d look for her, and I don’t even know where she is.’

He opens his mouth, closes it. Works his jaw. He doesn’t know what to say. How to feel. Naomi must have some way of communicating with her and a desperate, howling part of him wants to threaten her, do whatever it takes to find his precious girl and hold her to him, never let her go. He has mourned her all these years as the daughter who never grew past childhood, but apparently she has grown into a young woman he didn’t even know existed. One who no longer knows him. Thinks he is a danger to her.

Naomi watches as hope and desperation give way to despair and resignation. His expression is shockingly open but his eyes are distant, unseeing and this is something she recognises. There were times when he’d get so bound up in what he was feeling that he’d lose track of everything else. She used to kiss his forehead, card her fingers through his hair to bring him out of himself and remind him that he wasn’t alone.

She won’t touch him now. But it is awkward, so she speaks instead. To remind him he has an audience.

‘How did you find me?’ He blinks, and his eyes refocus on her.

‘There was a woman I killed, over an unrelated matter.’ He unconsciously leans back in the chair, crosses his legs and rests his arm on the armrest. Together with his careless talk of murder his new posture gives him a sense of power and menace and suddenly the man in her living room really is a stranger to her. This is Raymond Reddington, Concierge of Crime.

He tells her of how Diane Fowler claimed to know the truth of what happened to her, and to Jennifer. That he killed her anyway, gambling that someone else would know. That he’d spent months following leads and all the while he’d remembered the way Diane had gloated about knowing the truth, as if he knew less than he thought he did. He’d wondered if there wasn’t more to the mystery than who had done it and what they’d done with the bodies. That they might, just might have been alive after all.

As he speaks, Naomi watches the ruthless killer merge with the husband she knew until she is looking at a man who would burn down the world to protect the few people he cares about. She hates herself for it, but it is gratifying to know she is one of them.

Something in her expression must have betrayed her because he withdraws almost imperceptibly.

‘Did they tell you of Katarina?’ she sneers. She is well beyond caring, but at the time it had just been something else that showed she’d been living a lie. ‘I only ask because there was a daughter. I have recently reacquainted myself with her, and if our paths cross again there is a chance that she might be caught up in the mix. She knows nothing of who I was to her, or of Katarina. I want to keep it that way.’

‘You have some nerve coming here, thinking you can demand this from me. Is this why you came?’ He shakes his head. It isn’t. Not entirely. But now that he is here, he will not leave until this is settled.

‘I want you to promise me. If you don’t want me to involve myself with Jennifer, you need to assure me that you will practice the same forbearance with Elizabeth.’

‘Is this why you gave up on going after Jennifer so easily? You already have your hands full with your bastard daughter you have no time for ours!’

‘Never imply that I don’t care for her. I have mourned her for the last 23 years, and on the same day I learn she's alive you’re asking me to go on as if nothing has changed.’ His upper lip curls, and he grits his teeth. ‘I only ask this small thing in return.’

‘Fine.’

‘Very well then,’ he says with a bracing smile. A satisfactory deal has been struck, and if he has barred himself from ever re-entering Jennifer’s life, well it appears that he is not wanted – or needed – anyway. Red bends down to retrieve his fedora before he stands up and puts it on his head.

He takes a few steps, then wheels around.

‘Oh. In case our paths ever do cross again, would you mind forgetting this never happened? It’s all rather embarrassing.’

Naomi agrees. It doesn’t require her to behave any differently than she has in the last two decades, and she doesn’t know what to make of his current behaviour anyway.

‘You could slap me again. That’s always fun.’

With that last quip Red saunters through the house and out the front door as if he owns it.


End file.
